I wonder if I should tell this story, because it clearly states that I broke the law.
On one of the trips down to Agora, with a car full of other colleagues from the Vancouver security Special Interest Group, we got through in fairly short order, but the last question that the agent asked was, "Is there anything that you are bringing down which will be left in the United States?" It wasn't an uncommon question, and, as usual, we said no. It wasn't until we had pulled away, back onto the highway, and were trundling down the road, that I realized that I had just lied to the border agent, and had lied to several border agents before him.
I had $20,000 worth of books in the trunk of the car. And I was going to leave them in the United States.
The reason that this hadn't struck me was because the books hadn't actually cost me anything. You remember that I mentioned the book reviews? Well, Gloria had always said that I couldn't keep all the books. I never intended to keep *all* the books, of course, only the best ones. And, in fact, since I was reviewing the books, it was pretty easy to determine which ones were worth keeping, and which ones weren't. And, I've got to say, an awful lot of the books were not worth keeping. The books that were worth keeping were, in fact, fairly rare. (I suppose that I should mention, since I've mentioned it before, that "Bugs in Writing" is one of the books that I *did* keep, and still have.)
But what to do with all those other books? I had started by donating these books to the North Vancouver District Public Library, a branch of which was very near where we lived. I had donated so many books to the NVDPL, that it had apparently gained a reputation as having the best collection of computer and technical books in the entire library systems of the lower mainland and Fraser Valley. I heard from people, who did not know that I was doing the reviews and donating the books, that friends of theirs were traveling from as far field as White Rock to come to the NVDPL, to do computer research. But even the district library had its limits in terms of capacity.
I had taken books to Cap College. I had taken books to Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia. I had taken books to BCIT. I had taken books to the Vancouver Public Library. I had maxed out all of those venues as being recipients of the book donations.
So, I'd started taking them down to Agora meetings. I would load up the trunk of the car with books, and those who came with me were dragooned into acting as mules to carry the bags of books to the venue for the meetings. We would then line up the books along the stage at the front of whatever lecture hall we were meeting in. The attendees at the Agora meetings got to know this, and started coming early in order to get first crack at the piles of books.
When I said that there were $20,000 worth of books in the trunk, that's an estimate. I didn't keep track of the costs of each book, and I certainly didn't list up a total amount of the books that were being donated in this way. I didn't pay for them, and I didn't particularly care what they cost. Because of a requirement for another situation, I had, on occasion, done a totaling of the value of piles of books, and I had come up with a rough metric of a cost per linear shelf foot. So, I knew approximately how big a pile would have been if all the books were in one pile. I tended to take between $10,000 and $20,000 worth of books down to Agora on any of the trips.
However, having realized that I had just lied to that border agent, I realized that it was possibly pushing our luck. While it was undoubtedly highly unlikely that the border guards would suddenly decide that we were suspicious and ask to search the car, if it happened once, all of us traveling in the car would have had a very difficult time crossing the border again. The US border guards are pretty paranoid.
In my defense, it would be really pushing things to say that I was smuggling books. For one thing, I didn't pay for them. They were sent to me for free. (Well, I suppose not free, but it was just the cost of my labor in terms of reviewing them. Nobody ever paid for that, so it was really open to question whether this had any commercial value.) In addition, I wasn't charging anybody for leaving the books in the United States. And, finally, pretty much all the books came from the United States in the first place.
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/07/mgg-531-hwyd-visas.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
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